The Lemhas Catcher
by ardavenport
Summary: An unusual and very non-human life-form needs to expel to invaders in its territory. Captain Janeway and Ensign Kim have quite a lot of trouble communicating with it.
1. Chapter 1

**THE LEMHAS CATCHER**

by ardavenport

**- - - Part 1**

* * *

When 3Tusjaz found the Lemha, the surprise was as great for it as it was for our own. It literally stepped into 3Tusjaz.

It's standing appendage sank right down to 3Tusjaz's core. Predictably, it panicked. The thrashing caused 3Tusjaz's to solidify around the Lemha's appendage.

3Tusjaz panicked as well. The others answered the call rapidly, surrounding them. There were actually two Lemhas; even more of a shock. How had they ever gotten so far into the Outpost?

The Lemhas stung 3Tusjaz; energy weapons. They were tool users. Of course, I know that most Lemhas are, especially at the 14Tomo Outpost; I've seen far too many of them. But the others...they never expect it. And then the two Lemhas were working together, separating the trapped appendage from 3Tusjaz. In their own way. They did manage to divide them spatially at least. But they were still there.

3Tusjaz, 56Rosja, 89Xaja, 7Mija, 4Callulja, 8Ajaja, 26Tonuja, all scattered, dividing and reforming, absolutely the worst thing that they could have done, embedding the influence of the Lemhas even further than it already was. Time and time would be spent cleansing them.

7Mija had panicked less and had been a tuss15ja shaper and formed an enclosure needed for such work. More misery was spent forcing the Lemhas into it when they all would have preferred that the Lemhas disappear bcak to wherever they had come. But since no one knew how they had come to be in the Outpost so deeply, there was no way to know if they would go away, or go further in.

Once in the enclosure, that blocked their influences. A bit. Everyone withdrew from the Lemhas, but the stain of their presence still remained. Within and without of the whole area.

That's when they called me.

**

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o*o o*o o*o o*o o*o**

* * *

Ensign Kim grit his teeth while Captain Janeway unzipped his boot. His leg rested on her knees while her small hands worked the boot off his right foot. Kim desperately hoped his feet weren't too sweaty. What was worse? A broken ankle or offending the captain with bad foot odor?

Janeway pulled his sock down. She held her wrist light up while her fingers touched the already swollen and tight skin below his ankle bone. Kim gasped. It was broken. Heat and pain stabbed him from the tiniest movement. Great. Now I'm useless.

"I guess we're not going anywhere, anyway," Kim joked. He braced himself against the side of the box they were in. It was literally a box, with sides with hexagonal holes in them and all rounded corners. Janeway slid his sock back up over his ankle and he moved his leg to the side of their cage. There wasn't enough room for him to straighten his leg, so he sat propped up in his corner and trying to keep his knees out of Janeway's way while keeping his foot perfectly still. His own light was still switched on, lying on the cage floor next to him, an island of illumination in the darkness.

"Well, they'll be looking for us. I know _Voyager_ got my distress call before they cut us off. It shouldn't be long," she reassured. Kim nodded, feeling embarrassed that he must look pitiful enough that he needed reassuring. He brushed his bangs back. His forehead was filmed with sweat and he swallowed and consciously tried to slow his breathing. He tapped his own communicator on the front of his uniform. It responded with the same stilted bleep that the captain had gotten.

Janeway activated her tricorder, it's colored lights making their own illumination. She crouched next to him, the top of her head still touching the roof of their cage. They each still had their tricorders, communicators and phasers. But the communicators were being blocked and the phasers had no effect on their captors, whatever they were.

The material of their cage was organic, but it wasn't anything the tricorder recognized. She was even getting life signs from it, but everything in the cave registered life signs now. The sub-space energy field that had first attracted them to explore this place was still there and was now obviously related to the life signs. But she'd never seen anything like them.

She sat back, taking her weight off her legs, her back to the side of their prison. Her foot poked Kim and she apologized and pulled her knees closer to her. He had his tricorder out and was scanning the cave as well.

She touched the sides of the box. It felt like tough, rubbery plastic, warm to the touch. She peered out, her light casting hexagonal shadows through the holes of the cage. The sides of the cave had gone from innocuous rock to slick golds and greens. The glow that their captors had cast was gone now and nothing was moving anymore.

**

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o*o o*o o*o o*o o*o**

* * *

I surveyed the enclosed Lemhas when I arrived. I surveyed 56Rosja, 89Xaja, 7Mija, 4Callulja, 8Ajaja, 26Tonuja. The pattern of the Lemhas lay everywhere, extending outward from the ones in the enclosure and getting worse. A river of discord. 3Tusjaz was the worst, naturally. They all fretted around me, bits of them nibbling at me for information. I dispensed only instructions to them. Not exchanged. To give anything else would have placed myself in the mire of contamination that they were already in. I knew how to be near Lemhas and their effects.

I have answered eighteen summons to smooth the disturbances of Lemhas. After the seventh, I was tasked to make a study of why there seemed to be so many of them. The reality of this Outpost seems to breed them. There are so many Lemhas, and so many varieties of them. A great stretch past the Outpost's haven will show their tracks in the strange void beyond. I have made many such probings and found many, many tracings.

I probed inward at these contained Lemhas. They twitched and moved the air and moved their bodies, but no coherent response returned from them. Within them are tiny little energies, similar enough to us to cause sympathetic energies within ourselves. That is how they leave their mark. The nature of these beings is to survive and breed, and so their sympathies survive and breed. I had prepared myself when the call came. None of their energies entered me. I mirrored their like to know their effects. The others were infested, and getting worse. I had them taken away, into an unexposed region of the Outpost. The loose, breeding contaminations would be expelled from them.

The Lemhas now had only me to touch.

**

* * *

o*o o*o o*o o*o o*o**

* * *

"Captain!"

the glow reappeared from the now slick walls of the cave. Pink and blue, mottled bright and dim, it seeped out of the goldish-green walls and flowed down toward them. It surrounded the base of their cage like a pool of water. A touch of heated, stale air rose from the floor of the cave, but it was otherwise utterly silent. Tricorders hummed back at it from within the cage.

"It's a life form." Kim shook his head at the readings. "I think."

Coded patterns on her tricorder and the oozing glow outside the cage, Janeway's attention shifted back and forth between the two. She checked the memory and didn't find what she was looking for. But the tricorder didn't carry more than a few tera-quad, so it was possible that what she wanted was just too obscure to be included in the library of a field instrument.

"Hello," Janeway said to cave. "I'm Captain Kathryn Janeway of the Federation starship _Voyager_." They waited. Kim stared out at the glow on the floor of the cave, lapping just below the lowest openings of their prison. The air was dead of any sound or response.

"We come in peace. We mean you no harm. We didn't mean to trespass into your territory. If you'll allow us to leave, we won't return if you that's what you want." The phrases, 'We come in peace.' and 'We mean you no harm.' were actually in Starfleet's First Contact regulations under 'Suggested Introductory Statements', but they still seemed a bit inadequate to use on a life form that didn't talk and didn't even seem to have a body.

"Ensign, have you ever heard about some entities called the Birchat?" she whispered loudly.

"Uh...no."

"They're a type of energy creature that inhabits the Marfak system–"

"They've never been able to colonize that system," Kim eagerly leaped upon the fact that he did know. "There's some kind of energy field that keeps interfering with our technology. One group of colonists swore it was the spirits of a lost civilization."

"They weren't spirits," Janeway corrected, annoyed by such credulous information. "I was on a science team ten years ago that investigated them."

"Were they life forms like these?"

"Not really. About the only thing we could agree on was that they were life forms. But there were aspects of their behavior that indicated that they were intelligent."

"Were you able to communicate with them?" The blues and pinks from below them reflected from Kim's dark eyes.

"By the end of that mission we were having trouble communicating with ourselves. We never agreed on our results," Janeway admitted. "There were three separate conclusions from our analysis. But I signed onto the one that postulated that the Birchat were intelligent." Inconclusive science reports didn't travel very far, or get presented at many scientific conferences. Most people on the science team had sided with the idea sponsored by the two Vulcans in the group who had determined that the energy fields were a residual telepathic life form left over from an as yet undiscovered ancient civilization. Spirits. Janeway had rebelled at such a conclusion and Lieutenant Hamran had wisely deleted her nastier commentary from the report.

"But I was sure that the energy fields were intelligent and that they were looking us over. They were just...a life form that we didn't have any common reference points with."

Kim checked his tricorder again. "Were the readings similar?"

"No...they were different. But whenever they would appear, they appeared everywhere, in the ground, the air, the plants, everything. As if everything were alive with them. And there would never be any trace of where they would come from or go. Or how. Sometimes they would form shapes from the things on the planet." She pressed her hand to the side of their cage. "But we could never determine any purpose to it."

"It's kind of obvious what their purpose is here." Kim crouched next to her, in uncomfortably close quarters.

"I have to admit," Janeway looked around her as she ran her hand along the side of their prison, "the Birchat never formed anything this specific."

**

* * *

o*o o*o o*o o*o o*o**

* * *

The Lemhas are a divided species. They come, one after another, in time. Pairs of them group to produce successors before they wither. There are two types; the bearers, the ones who create new Lemhas from themselves; the initiators, who begin the process. I have no notion of what the initiators impart to the bearers, but the initiators must be the ones to make the start. A time ago, I had once maintained several Lemhas in a now disused portion of the 14Tomo Outpost. More of differences between us and them came from that.

The enclosure that 7Mija had made contained a pair.

The initiator was larger than the bearer. The bearer moved around more than the initiator. They stayed separate from each other, each on their own side of the enclosure. Their total spatial volume fit within the enclosure easily, but they were folded, appendages drawn in close to their bodies. The digits at the ends of their fore appendages curled easily around the enclosure openings. They would quickly spread a film of their contamination wherever they touched in the Outpost without the confinement.

I examined the space next to them, the tiny, lifeless particles in the air about them, their surface coverings and the covering of their coverings. They stirred the air with subtle vibrations, magnifying them with the hollow spaces around the hollow spaces within them. They physically drew in tightly on themselves, two separate packages in the enclosure. But their influence increased hugely, so much that I withdrew my probings. Their presence filled the enclosure to overflowing and did not subside for a space of time after I parted myself from them.

They spilled toward each other, their lifeless outer forms bumping together. And they created more air vibrations. There was no more information to be gained this way.

**

* * *

o*o o*o o*o o*o o*o**

* * *

"Hey!" Kim jerked his toes back from the glow that was now seeping into the cage with them. Janeway had the same reflex and they collided briefly before they each pushed into separate corners. The skin under his socks tingled as Kim watched it cover his feet. Janeway swatted at her shoulders when she felt it on her neck.

"Captain!" Mottled hues encircled Kim's chest; his arms reached for her as he receded. A river of blue had split the cage and was pulling them apart. Janeway opened her mouth and the prickly feeling filled it and down her throat. She gasped and sprang forward but they didn't even come close to touching each other. She felt as if she were swimming in static, drowning in it. Her vision clouded over; even with her eyes squeezed shut, she could still see moving pink and blue spots. She cried out, unable to form words, her movements increasingly sluggish.

Their former cage had split completely, fluid again and now vanishing into the floor. Energy seemed to harden around them, shaping itself to their bodies, forcing them into immobility.

Kim lay stretched out on his side, trapped just above the ground. At least it didn't feel like he was lying on anything solid. His heart pounded in his chest. He could feel the tingling all the way down into his stomach and his whole body twitched with the urge to scratch all over, to swallow anything that would force this thing out of him. His ears filled with white noise, he could only see moving spots. And his ankle hurt. The injury was still there, aggravated by the sudden motion and throbbing with his heartbeat.

**

* * *

o*o o*o o*o o*o o*o**

* * *

I squeezed the enclosure apart and dispersed it. The Lemhas pressed toward each other. The bearer nearly squirmed away through the brief opening before I contained both of them again.

I had their stain with me now. Unavoidable. Lumps of separate life eddies swam at my edges. I flushed them aside. Later would be the cleansing, as with 3Tusjaz, 56Rosja, 89Xaja, 7Mija, 4Callulja, 8Ajaja, 26Tonuja.

Such a mess.

**

* * *

o*o o*o o*o o*o o*o**

* * *

Janeway lay on her side, her arms raised over her head, frozen in the position she'd been in when she'd tried to escape. She could hardly breathe; her insides were boiling. Her eyes were still shut and she couldn't open them. Were they stuck that way, her eyelids welded together?

It was everywhere inside her. It had flowed into her ears, her nose, her mouth, invading all the way down to her stomach and further, invading her from her lower body as well. It rustled a faint white noise in her ears. It had her in every possible way, crawling around inside her and all she could do was wait for it to end.

Her mind pictured Chakotay and Tuvok finding her half dissolved body, their faces, especially Chakotay's, as they clutched at what was left. Her throat tightened, her eyes teared up. She wouldn't be able to speak; she could only watch while they tried...

The vision of melodrama broke her panic. She clenched her teeth together and concentrated on slowing her breathing. I'm not dead yet; I'm not dead yet...

**

* * *

- - - End Part 1**


	2. Chapter 2

**THE LEMHAS CATCHER**

by ardavenport

**

* * *

- - - Part 2**

The substance of the dispersed enclosure would be useless after this, and it would be expelled from the Outpost as would the Lemhas. Their life eddies bolted wildly within my containment.

The Lemhas are intelligent, in their own existence. They group and form patterns. That is the part of them that reaches deepest into our patterns. The reality of them creates discord and fractures in the parts of the Outpost that they touch. Left as they were, the cracks would spread and grow. The fragments of their patterns clashing with ours.

I have learned containment for the Lemhas. Their life fragments slip and glide across the barriers I create. The reflections of their life energies are what I join with. Harmless and easily discarded. My reflections infuse them now. And I wait for order. I hold all but the tiniest motions of this pair to stillness. Time passes and the discord of the bearer and the initiator will reform into their order again. But I am there with them.

**

* * *

o*o o*o o*o o*o o*o**

* * *

Ensign Kim had wet his pants.

His sturdy Starfleet underwear, designed for planets and away teams that did not include rest stops, and about which many tactless jokes had spawned, saved him from total embarrassment. But Harry Kim still suffered the private shame of knowing that he'd lost control.

He'd been waiting for certain death to claim him for the past hour. His insides prickled with the energies that held him, but it had gone no further. He had fallen off the cliff of blind terror and he was still there.

He lay on his side, silent, utterly immobile and not quite touching the ground. No bars and no cage on the outside this time; they were all inside him now. His nose was less than 20 centimeters from Captain Janeway's outstretched hands. Her fingertips shifted and blurred in his teary, double vision. He'd been staring at her throughout this new imprisonment. He couldn't tell from her arms and the top of her head if she was breathing, but her fingernails and skin color was good. He'd settled into a restrained breath control that didn't involve expanding his rib cage. Kim had mentally wrestled with dozens of unscratchable itches and his toes yearned to squirm. Not being able to blink had become a minor discomfort next to all the other unrequited fidgeting he was suffering.

Was this torture? Kim didn't think so. More likely their captors had pinned its specimens down and just didn't know what to do with them. A fresh wave of panic passed through him as he envisioned himself caught in the machinery of some omnipotent alien's musings. A slip or a careless thought would crush him from inside, cell by cell. No malevolence or intent would be required. And not even a last minute rescue from _Voyager_ would save either of them.

Kim's muscles tensed, trembling without motion. His eyes stung, his vision completely blurred to haze and shapes. New terror filled him as his body silently spasmed. His ankle throbbed in agony. His one coherent hope was that this new episode was only his own body's seizure, just a reaction to the enforced immobility.

**

* * *

o*o o*o o*o o*o o*o**

* * *

They are shadows in solid form. The Lemhas cannot be touched in any way or they shrivel and their essence drains away and vanishes. Even to hold them too still would crush the life eddies inside them, and extinguishing them in such a way would cause an intense discord that even I would need time and time to dissipate. I have done it and it is both miraculous and frightening to be part of. I have shared those remnants and all are amazed by them.

They are not fragile in their own reality. Separateness is life to them. We would diminish to less than nothing in such a state, but the Lemhas grow in complexity and essence that way.

But the contamination that they cause in us can be used as reflections. If contained from the start. I recreate from them their whole essence in reflection. Them, but not them. I touch the reflection I have created. I touch them and not.

The Lemhas come to know the reflections between us. This pair, the initiator and the bearer, are intelligent. Their discords diminish with this false touching. The reflections imitate their own forms. I do not think that they mistake the reflections for their own forms, but as time lapses, they come to know that the reflections are not in conflict. Conflict causes the largest discords in the Lemhas and the largest contaminations.

The bearer quieted first. The initiator did not still as the bearer had, but enough. They both had stretched out their forms as soon as I had dispersed the enclosure and this is the form I had caught. Caught and stilled, the Lemhas can be pushed from the Outpost.

**

* * *

o*o o*o o*o o*o o*o**

* * *

Janeway touched the back of her front teeth with the tip of her tongue and then the upper gums. She focused all her attention on the ordinarily forgettable inside of her mouth. Her mouth tingled from the tiny movements. It made her salivate and she made a conscious effort to swallow. It tingled all the way down, like carbonated electricity. She'd been drooling for the past 30 or 40 minutes, she couldn't really tell how long, unable to manage more than a token swallow until now.

Slowly, sluggishly, she opened her eyes. She saw everything through a shifting blue, pink and white haze, but she could see. Presumably the energy all around her, and all through her, was preventing _Voyager_ from getting a transporter lock on them. She doubted that even the ship's sensors could find them through this soup.

Janeway felt a prickling pressure on her right side. Slowly, her body settled on the ground, no longer supported by the energy infusing her body. Her shoulders twinged painfully as she dragged her arms down past her head and then under her. Every motion created spasms of static in her and her arms trembled as she lifted herself up. But it felt so good for her to move and she felt her strength returning.

"Unh," she moaned aloud from the effort. Then she paused, waiting for something else, like a convenient humanoid head forming out of the haze to explain why they were being held prisoner, but it didn't happen. She wiped at her face and opened her mouth wide, yawning, and her ears popped. The sensation tingled all the way down her throat and made her cough. Everything smelled just a little bit like ozone.

She shook her head. The cave was unchanged as far as she could tell, at least unchanged from it's last transformation. The passageway that would have led to the surface had melted over. Even knowing their last known transporter coordinates, Chakotay would have to find them in cave tunnels that shifted position through an energy field that was invulnerable to phaser fire.

She saw Kim lying on his side through the glowing haze that filmed her eyes.

"Ensign." She scrabbled over to him. He stared, unmoving, up at her. "Ensign." She touched him, the shoulders of his uniform, his face, turning his head toward her. He came alive, blinking and then screwing up his face.

"Augh."

"Ensign." She kept his head facing toward her, pressing him for a coherent response. He squirmed and twitched, bringing his arms up and bumping her. She leaned close. "Ensign."

"C-Captain?" His eyes were bloodshot and watery, but he could obviously see her. He struggled to sit up and she helped him. Kim grimaced and shook himself as if he were trying to shake oil off his skin. The captain put her hand on his shoulder to get him to stop. "What is this?" he finally asked.

"I don't know, but whatever this thing is, it doesn't want to let go of us yet." They both glowed faintly with the shifting light patterns that had held them prisoner. "Are you alright?"

Kim shrugged and looked down at his bootless foot. "Most of me at least." Janeway frowned down at his injury. She'd forgotten about it. Kim still had his tricorder but they'd lost everything else when the cage had split apart. She scanned the area around them.

"Wait here." She patted Kim's shoulder and got up.

"Sure. I'm not going anywhere," Kim said to himself, but she ignored it.

They both still wore their wrist lights, now switched off, but the rest of their equipment was all scattered around them. Janeway knelt to pick up her tricorder. Her fingers closed around it and the glow from them spread to the instrument. She pulled her hand away. The tricorder sat there, no glow. She held her hand to it. Even through the shifting haze clouding her vision, she could see the energy outline around her fingers and not around the tricorder as it lay on the ground.

"Captain?" Kim said from behind her. Quickly, she gathered up the tricorder and phasers.

"Look." She laid the tricorder down and touched it. Kim didn't understand until she explained, "The energy doesn't penetrate our instruments. Just us."

"Uuh, does that help us?"

"It means that whatever this stuff is," she shook her fingers and the energy clinging to them. "it knows the difference between a life form and a tricorder. And presumably it's more interested in life forms"

"I guess we have something in common then," Kim agreed. Janeway had to admit that it wasn't a lot of information. Remembering the muddled results of the Marfak expedition and the Birchat, there would be little chance of determining what this energy was. Single entity or entities? She opened the tricorder, the energy from her fingers surrounding it, but naturally it wasn't working. She hoped its memory was intact.

While lying immobile on her side in the cave she had recalled all that she could about the Marfak expedition. The whole enterprise had been a vast disappointment. At first the Birchat's tendency to pop in unannounced with an image or solid shape of a rock or plant or a piece of their equipment had been amusing. But they were tired of it after three weeks after it had caused four minor injuries and damaged two temporary dwellings and their contents. And they had nothing to show for themselves but a string of observations that just repeated the work of previous expeditions. The thrill of discovery had dissolved into to the pressure to produce results. Janeway had thought that even the Vulcans were looking frustrated, but they had arrogantly snubbed her comment about it. The planet would have made an excellent colony world and Command had wanted them to come up with a way to make the Birchat behave. It never happened.

Janeway tucked her tricorder into the black pouch at her side and looked about for an opening in the cave, but there were none. She and Kim were no longer caged, but they were still held prisoner.

"We mean you no harm" Kim looked up at the sound of her voice. "You don't need to hold us here. All we want to do is leave this place in peace." Captain Janeway waited, listening, but all they heard was the faint murmur of energy in their bodies. No sign, no pattern emerged in the shifting energy fields.

She felt herself leaning to one side. She looked up and saw Kim leaning the same way. The air on one side of her now seemed thick, pushing her. She grasped Kim's arm and they both slid a few centimeters before the pressure eased. Behind her, in the direction of the push, the cave wall flowed down and away, opening up into a new passageway.

Ensign Kim gripped her arm. "I think it wants us to go somewhere."

**

* * *

o*o o*o o*o o*o o*o**

* * *

The cleansing cannot begin until the source of contamination is gone. I push the any Lemhas in the Outpost out along the trail that they came from to where they can join their own place.

But this pair has no trail. They appeared in the Outpost. A great shock. But I have their reflections and with them I know the reflections of the others. There are always others with Lemhas. Others outside the Outpost. Others whose trails remain in the great void beyond.

Through the reflections I have of this pair. I push them out toward the other reflections. Their spatial bodies move, propelled by their standing appendages; their upper appendages move to no purpose that I can determine.

Their contamination is contained through me so the pushing will not spread the discord. But the reflections of the bearer and the initiator contain portions of each other. They are intelligent.

**

* * *

o*o o*o o*o o*o o*o**

* * *

Ensign Kim's arm stretched completely over Captain Janeway's shoulders. He felt like a colossal oaf needing her support with his injured ankle between them. He couldn't put any weight on it at all. They crept along by centimeters, their boots threatening to slip on the smooth, transformed cave floor with each cautious scrabble forward. Behind them, the glow nudged them along.

There was no hint ahead of them about where they were being pushed, or why. They had pleaded out loud for verbal communication again, but had gotten no response, again.

A long, featureless passageway had opened up in that direction, while the cave behind them closed up like a perpetual dead end following them. If there was anything at the end of the passage they faced, he couldn't tell. Detail and color were dimmed and lost in the white and pink and blue glow that he saw through. Kim wondered if they fell or stopped moving if they would be drowned in the rising pseudo-rock from the rear. Kim felt even more like a bug in a jar to this alien entity. Or a test animal in a maze, since they didn't know where they were being herded or why.

Kim turned his head, to see if the passage behind them was still closing up...

...Kim's whole body pulled to the left and down.

"Augh!" Janeway's body was now under him. He felt his full weight on her shoulders and head as he hurriedly rolled off of her, away from the persistent force at their backs.

Bruised from the fall, Janeway scrambled away from under Harry Kim, her short hair pulled and mussed. She took off her wrist light, discarding it, and rubbed the skin and bone it had scrapped when she'd hit the ground. Kim lay curled up on his side, facing away from her. On her hands and knees, she went to him, furious that she'd let him fall.

"Harry?"

"Uh, ah, I'm okay." His voice sounded like pain and he clutched his leg. As far as she could tell through the shifting, glowing fog that covered her eyes, he didn't look any more injured than he already had been.

Something pushed at the bottoms of her boots and at her back, forcing her into Kim. Janeway twisted around while Kim struggled into a sitting position behind her.

"Stop. He's injured. He can't travel." Janeway really didn't think her words mean anything to the alien force pushing into her, but they meant something to her anyway. She got another shove that pushed her right into Kim.

Back-to-back, they started to slide together on the smooth floor.

"Mmmmm!" Janeway turned her head away from the thick mattress of energy pressing against her. Her whole body began to tremble, and she could feel Kim shaking as well. She had gotten to where she could ignore the tingling, prickly energy all through her, but the hard contact with this glowing wall of force that had only nudged them before was now setting her nerves on fire. The ozone smell of the air intensified and her mouth tasted like iron. A horrible cold pain shot up from her feet and bottom where they slid on the cave floor, like they had been frozen and were now painfully beginning to thaw.

The pressure left her and Janeway fell forward in a fetal position, still trembling. She heard Kim's body collapse as well. She took deep breaths and slowly the fit subsided.

Captain Janeway let her body relax; her legs uncurled, her muscles stopped twitching. She lifted her head and then her shoulders, and then supported herself on her elbows on the hard floor.

The haze over her vision was worse with dark and light patches pulsating white and pale pink and blue in and out of view, but she should see a steady circle of light around them. She couldn't see any passages leading anywhere. It appeared that the corridor had now changed into a circular chamber with them in the center. Kim was still curled up on his side.

"Harry?" She moved over to him and laid her hand on his shoulder. He squinted up at her.

"How's your ankle?"

"Uh, not any worse than before. I think." He grimaced. She patted his shoulder and looked around again at their new prison.

"Uh, Captain?"

"I think it might have been listening to us after all." She brushed her hair away from her face. She had lost her orientation. She couldn't tell what direction they had been going in or from where they'd come. "The passage has completely closed.

"Uh, Captain!"

Janeway noticed the extra glow from above at the same time as she felt her body lifting off the floor. She stared up at the new passage forming above them. They floated up like soap bubbles toward the new opening.

"Up is good, right?" Harry wasn't sure of his assumption, but now they were actually going to where a _Voyager_ search team would more likely find them. Janeway noticed right away that they were not weightless. She felt like she rested on a cushion of air that was lifting her up.

Above them, the tunnel they were in stretched further than they could see. Below, the tunnel filled in a couple of meters below them as they moved upward. The movement, like the energy they rested in was ominously smooth and nearly silent, like liquid sand flowing into a pit under them.

Janeway noticed something to her right. Hanging in mid-air with them was Harry Kim's discarded boot. They each still had their communicators, tricorders and phasers, but she had thought that the boot had been left behind. She looked all around them and saw her wrist light, and Harry's, hanging in mid-air along with them and the boot. _It knows what we are, and it wants to keep us and all our things together. It's taking us to the surface We never got anything even remotely this coherent from the Birchat._

"Thank-you." Janeway said to the air around them. She still hoped for a sign, a pattern in the glow around them, or an echo, or something. But there was nothing, as if she was alone talking to an empty view screen.

"You think it's taking us to the surface?"

"I think so. So far, the only thing that it's done is isolate us and keep us in one place, and then move us around."

Kim flexed his fingers and the clinging energy around and inside them. "It's still sticking a little too close for comfort."

Janeway looked down at the glow around her own body. The prickly feeling in her insides had subsided, but was still there. "But if you were a subspace life form, or a multi-dimensional one, what kind of force field would you use to keep something in?"

Kim's eyes widened. "A three-dimensional one."

She checked her tricorder, but it still wouldn't do anything more than blink that it wasn't functioning. She would have to use the ship's computer to pry out any information from it, if it hadn't been erased. They continued to rise slowly while glowing, shifting rock opened up above them.

Janeway didn't know very much about the few truly alien, energy-based creatures who exchanged any meaningful communication with the Federation, the Folhts, the Medusans, the Ovizees. There were dozens of other known 'maybes' that the Federation could do nothing more than keep people away from despite literally hundreds of years of study. She held her arm out and looked at the shifting light and dark patches, felt it tingle in the nerves of her arm, the sensation now more warming than prickly.

"If only I could talk to you," she wondered aloud.

A cool breeze with a whisper of sound touched both of them. Above them a dark circle had opened up.

**

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- - - End Part 2**


	3. Chapter 3

**THE LEMHAS CATCHER**

by ardavenport

**

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- - - Part 3**

There are always problems with expelling the Lemhas. They are always different problems. And the same. These ones had no trail into the Outpost. I pushed the reflections with the Lemhas toward the matching Lemhas outside the 14Tomo Outpost. They pushed as other reflections/Lemhas. They pushed back as other reflections/Lemhas. The reflections push as reflections. I push the push of the reflections which is pushed back on by the Lemhas which is pushed by the reflections...

This is as their discords are, reflections on reflections on reflections. But it begins with the Lemhas reflections which are of the same nature as the Lemhas; they do not touch, except for their own reflections. The discords close in on themselves and do not spread. The pushing is necessary for the expulsion. All other ways of expulsion touch them and spread their discords.

That is what I am called. I have shaped an almost-touch, unique to the Lemhas that does not spread the like of their world.

I am sure that the Lemhas are not aware of their discords, as they are not aware of our touchings. They are entirely spatial. The reflections of this pair is similar to those of others I have seen. Extended from their bodies they have two standing appendages, two upper appendages and a single round appendage above all. The four lower appendages have spatial purposes, but the round appendage locates only an opening through which the Lemhas take substances within themselves. This opening is rigidly placed and I have never seen it move or locate anywhere else on any others of the Lemhas. And the round appendage concentrates and sources the worst discords from them.

Pushed to the edge of the Outpost, my reflections touch this pair of Lemhas. The expulsion of them is near completion.

**

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o*o o*o o*o o*o o*o**

* * *

Commander Chakotay stepped forward when he saw them emerging from the glow. Lieutenant Commander Tuvok's hand clamped on his arm, keeping him back from the alien circle of light.

"Captain." She twisted around in mid air and made a sound. She and Ensign Kim rose completely out of the shimmering pit that had opened up in the midst of the search party.

"Commander, we're all right. I don't think it means us any harm." She finished her turn around, her arm outstretched to him. Chakotay stared back at his captain. Hanging in mid-air, her short hair wild, her whole body aglow with shifting, multi-colored light, she looked angelic. The air on his face felt faintly warm.

The circle began to shrink. It's bright edge pulling back slowly, Janeway and Kim descended to the luminous but now solid ground. Kim went to his knees, Janeway's feet touched and she held her arms out for balance. The circle receded faster, rushing in toward Janeway. Kim started when the glow whipped away from him. For a second, it remained on Janeway before plunging away down into the ground where it disappeared from under her.

"Captain?" Both Chakotay and Tuvok stepped forward. The alien light gone, they shone their wrist lights on Janeway. The other two members of the rescue party, Ayala and Wiyez, went to Kim. Her mouth open in a 'O' of surprise, Chakotay couldn't tell if the expression on Janeway's face was wonder or shock. He touched her arm and she jerked away from him, her whole body beginning to tremble. He steadied her shoulders and she cringed. Tuvok flicked his eyes toward Kim and saw the same reaction from him.

"Tuvok to Voyager. Medical emergency. Beam the away team to Sickbay."

For a brief second, when everything disappeared in the transport the pain shooting up from her feet disappeared, but as soon as Janeway re-materialized in Sickbay it came back even stronger. Anything that touched her, her boots, her uniform, Chakotay, was like needles stabbing into her. The doctor moved in, frowning.

"Hmmm, there's something disrupting my scanner," he looked unhappily at his medical tricorder.

"Doctor!" Chakotay snapped as he went to Kim.

"Get them on the beds," the doctor snapped back. Janeway felt herself being grabbed and lifted, which hurt even more, but she couldn't move. Her whole body was rigid and shaking. She made involuntary sounds as they laid her on the biobed; her whole backside stung and the trembling increased.

"Doctor!" Her first officer held her shoulders down and she couldn't tell him that it was the physical contact that was causing her pain. Janeway was completely disconnected from her body and aside from the pain, the sensation was weird. She could think and breath freely, but nothing else worked right. Nothing else worked at all. Her body twitched and twisted on its own with her brain just along for the ride. The strangest part was that Chakotay looked much more worried than she felt. From the tortured look on his face, she might have thought that she was dying, but this was an inconvenience compared to what had happened trapped in the cave on the planet because she knew that in Sickbay something could be done about it.

"Doc—" The doctor appeared, elbowing Chakotay out of his way. He pressed a hypospray to her neck. A cool sensation spread from the injection. Janeway's head rolled to the side, the trembling ceased, her body and limbs numbed.

"Hmm." The doctor turned her head so she could see him and Chakotay, Tuvok peering down at her on the other side of the biobed. The medical hologram calmly scanned her and looked over the readings above her head.

"Well?" Chakotay demanded.

"The captain and Ensign Kim have been exposed to some kind of penetrating energy field for the past several hours. I've never seen anything like it, but the signature is identical to the energy source that they were investigating when they disappeared on the planet."

"Is it still present?" Tuvok put his hand on the phaser at his side and peered down at her suspiciously. Good old Tuvok.

"No. I'm only detecting residual energy; I had to re-calibrate the medical scanners around it. But I'd say that even if it were still present, I don't think that shooting the captain or Ensign Kim would exactly help the situation." Tuvok lowered his hand and returned the doctor's cool expression. Haze seemed to fill in the edges of Janeway's vision and she wondered if the doctor was right about the energy being gone.

"Is she hurt?" Chakotay ignored the snide exchange, his eyes were still on her, and Janeway appreciated the concern in his dark eyes, even if she couldn't respond to it.

The doctor looked down the length of her body. "Well, for someone who's lying sedated in Sickbay, she isn't doing too badly. Apparently she and Ensign Kim acclimated to the energy on the planet and returning to 'normal' is what caused their seizures." The doctor appraised his hypospray and gave her another injection; she hardly felt it this time. "A few hours of rest and she and Ensign Kim should be fine. Well," the doctor looked over his shoulder, "that is if Mr. Kim survives Mr. Paris's treatment of his broken ankle." The doctor stepped away and turned back to the diagnostic biobed where Harry Kim was. "I'll give them both full examinations just to be sure, so unless you gentlemen care to help, I suggest you let us get along with our work."

Janeway might have smiled at the doctor's dismissal and Tuvok and Chakotays' expressions if she could have. Tuvok took her phaser and tricorder from the pouches still at her waist and she thought she made eye contact with Chakotay when he took the tricorder from Tuvok. He nodded and smiled to her before leaving.

Janeway dozed for a few moments before the doctor returned and took off her boots and socks. He activated a control at the foot of the biobed and she felt herself floating just enough to make it easy for the doctor to strip off her uniform. She closed her eyes while he worked. Even if she could move, there wasn't much point to her objecting to the indignity. Starfleet sickbays were designed for efficiency for the medical staff, not the patients' pride. It gave the patients ample motivation to get well and out as soon as possible.

The doctor quickly cut away her shirt and once he had her down to her underwear, he covered her with a blanket before cutting away the underwear. Then he slipped the pants and then shirt of a pair of Sickbay pajamas on her, again under the blanket. The seams of the garments sealed automatically when she felt his fingers press them together. He settled her back on the biobed and covered her completely with the blanket. Finally, the doctor made a self satisfied noise that he always made when he was too pleased with himself and left her. He said something to Tom Paris, but she didn't listen. She wondered what Chakotay would be able to get out of her tricorder, and did he get Harry Kim's tricorder, too...?

"Ah, she is awake, Commander." Janeway blinked up at the doctor's round, bald head that loomed over her. He lifted the hand that rested on her forehead and she wondered where he'd come from. She turned her head and stirred, feeling disoriented, knowing that she'd lost time.

"Mmm, Doctor?" He passed a scanner over her.

"As I said, Commander, she's more or less recovered."

"Captain?" The body of Chakotay's black uniform hemmed her in on the other side of the biobed. She stared up at his dark hair and forehead tattoo and wondered how he had gotten to stand over her like this without her noticing him even returning to Sickbay. She started and moved under the blanket and her hand brushed Chakotay's middle. He enfolded her wrist and hand in both of his. His expression was concerned, but not panicked like the last time she'd seen him.

"How long have I been here?"

"Since returning from the planet," the doctor answered, "you've been asleep for about for about five hours."

"How's Ensign Kim?"

"He's still resting." The doctor glanced in that direction. "He seems to have experienced more direct contact with the aliens down on the planet than you did. Or at least his foot did. He's still resting, but he'll recover."

"Captain, can you tell us what happened?"

Janeway pushed herself up into a sitting position with Chakotay's assistance. She took a deep breath that turned into a yawn, but she didn't feel any worse than she might have on a morning when she didn't want to crawl out of bed.

"We ran into something. It must have been the source of those strange energy signals, but I don't think it was anything _Voyager_ could use for a power source."

"Did they communicate with you?" Chakotay asked. She shook her head slowly.

"No, it wasn't anything like that. I think we just accidently walked right into the middle of it and it just didn't know what to do with us until it kicked us out." She rubbed her neck and suppressed another yawn.

"Well, according to the readings we got from yours and Harrys' tricorders, there were more than one of them." He picked up a padd that he'd laid on the biobed next to her. Janeway snatched it away from him. Chakotay felt like he'd just given her a present from the expression on her face.

"It took Torres and Jenny Delany a couple of hours to make any sense of the readings," he narrated as she eagerly paged down through the analysis. "There were apparently more than one of them. We found seven distinct life forms at first. Then another one appeared and seems to have taken over. We couldn't even tell how big it was. Torres said it was anywhere from ten cubic meters to two thousand in size. Harry might be able to do more with this when he's up."

He didn't think she was listening, but he didn't mind. He waited another few minutes while she read through and commented about what had happened to her on the planet. He finally rested his hand on her shoulder because he did need her to listen to what he said next.

"We haven't been able to get any more information about those subterranean caves with the ship's sensors. They seem to have deliberately shut themselves off and after what happened I haven't sent down any more away teams. We're ready to leave when you give the order."

Janeway knew a hint when she heard one. There wasn't nearly enough tricorder data for a profile of a whole species. And former science officer that she was, Janeway knew that it would take weeks for a large, dedicated survey team, like the Marfak expedition, for that. And _Voyager_ had neither; they still had more than 60,000 light years to travel to get home.

"Yes, of course, Commander. Lay in a course out of this system and back toward the Alpha Quadrant."

The doctor had apparently gotten bored hearing about the entities on the planet below and had left them. He now returned, carrying a pair of blue slippers that matched the blue pajamas Janeway had on.

"Ah well, there's no reason for you to languish in my Sickbay anymore, Captain." He presented her with the slippers. "Since I see you have sufficient bedtime reading, I'll recommend that you rest in your quarters. I'll even let the commander here escort you. As long as you report back here at 0800 tomorrow morning."

Both Janeway and Chakotay sighed as the doctor left them again. Janeway put the slippers on and let Chakotay help her down from off the biobed. He presented her with his bend elbow and she smiled and took his arm though she didn't really need the support.

'You know I've been held prisoner by hostile aliens on away missions myself before," he commented as the left the antiseptic air of Sickbay and strolled down the corridor to the turbolift. "But I don't remember that I wasn't able to talk to them."

"They weren't hostile," she reminded him. He waited for her to finish; he could see the unfinished thoughts on her face. "They were just...different.

**

* * *

o*o o*o o*o o*o o*o**

* * *

I return to the cleansing after expelling the Lemhas. 3Tusjaz, 56Rosja, 89Xaja, 7Mija, 4Callulja, 8Ajaja, 26Tonuja are cleansed and beyond the Outpost. The other discords of the Lemhas will be dissipated, but still portions of the Outpost will need to be isolated and expelled.

We always lose a little bit of this space with each intrusion of the Lemhas. The Outpost is of our own world here in this one, but bits of it are continually being claimed by this world. The Lemhas always intrude into us. We never into them. After time, this Outpost will be of this world and we will not be of it, or we will be a part of this world.

**## ## ## END ## ## ##**

**

* * *

Note:** This story was written by me and first printed (under the name 'Anne Davenport') in_ Delta Quadrant 7_, a fanzine back in the hard-copy and snail-mail days, in 1998.

**Disclaimer:** All characters and situations belong to Paramount; I'm just playing in that sandbox.


End file.
